III. _The aim of Cicero in writing his philosophical works_.
It is usual to charge Cicero with a want of originality as a philosopher, and on that score to depreciate his works. The charge is true, but still absurd, for it rests on a misconception, not merely of Cicero's purpose in writing, but of the whole spirit of the later Greek speculation. The conclusion drawn from the charge is also quite unwarranted. If the later philosophy of the Greeks is of any value, Cicero's works are of equal value, for it is only from them that we get any full or clear view of it. Any one who attempts to reconcile the contradictions of Stobaeus, Diogenes Laertius, Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch and other authorities, will perhaps feel little inclination to cry out against the confusion of Ciceros ideas. Such outcry, now so common, is due largely to the want, which I have already noticed, of any clear exposition of the variations in doctrine which the late Greek schools exhibited during the last two centuries before the Christian era. But to return to the charge of want of originality. This is a virtue which Cicero never claims. There is scarcely one of his works (if we except the third book of the _De Officiis_), which he does not freely confess to be taken wholly from Greek sources. Indeed at the time when he wrote, originality would have been looked upon as a fault rather than an excellence. For two centuries, if we omit Carneades, no one had propounded anything substantially novel in philosophy: there had been simply one eclectic combination after another of pre-existing tenets. It would be hasty to conclude that the writers of these two centuries are therefore undeserving of our study, for the spirit, if not the substance of the doctrines had undergone a momentous change, which ultimately exercised no unimportant influence on society and on the Christian religion itself.
When Cicero began to write, the Latin language may be said to have been destitute of a philosophical literature. Philosophy was a sealed study to those who did not know Greek. It was his aim, by putting the best Greek speculation into the most elegant Latin form, to extend the education of his countrymen, and to enrich their literature. He wished at the same time to strike a blow at the ascendency of Epicureanism throughout Italy. The doctrines of Epicurus had alone appeared in Latin in a shape suited to catch the popular taste. There seems to have been a very large Epicurean literature in Latin, of which all but a few scanty traces is now lost. C. Amafinius, mentioned in the _Academica_[113], was the first to write, and his books seem to have had an enormous circulation[114]. He had a large number of imitators, who obtained such a favourable reception, that, in Cicero's strong language, they took possession of the whole of Italy[115]. Rabirius and Catius the Insubrian, possibly the epicure and friend of Horace, were two of the most noted of these writers. Cicero assigns various reasons for their extreme popularity: the easy nature of the Epicurean physics, the fact that there was no other philosophy for Latin readers, and the voluptuous blandishments of pleasure. This last cause, as indeed he in one passage seems to allow, must have been of little real importance. It is exceedingly remarkable that the whole of the Roman Epicurean literature dealt in an overwhelmingly greater degree with the physics than with the ethics of Epicurus. The explanation is to be found in the fact that the Italian races had as yet a strong practical basis for morality in the legal and social constitution of the family, and did not much feel the need of any speculative system; while the general decay among the educated classes of a belief in the supernatural, accompanied as it was by an increase of superstition among the masses, prepared the way for the acceptance of a purely mechanical explanation of the universe. But of this subject, interesting and important as it is in itself, and neglected though it has been, I can treat no farther.